Owning your own business is tough enough, but add onto that having to try and find the right people to help you run it, and it can quickly turn into a headach! Finding the right people for any business is tough, especially when it comes to beauty businesses.
Hiring the right people for your beauty business can mean the difference between scaling quickly or being stuck in the neverending rotation of trying to find good help. This blog is meant to give you some vital tips on how you can give yourself the best chance at hiring the right people!
Define The Job Description Clearly
The clearer you define the job description and the type of position you’re looking for, the more qualified applicants you’ll get. It always amazes me how many job postings I’ll see in the beauty business that seem very vague about the types of people and skills they’re looking for.
When you create a job posting for a position, clearly define things like the skills that are necessary, the hours/times they’ll need to work, what specific skills they should have, and any other relevant information you believe to be important.
The more specific you are, the more ideal of a candidate you’ll get!
Ask For Referrals
If you want the best chance at getting the most qualified candidates, then the easiest way to do this is by getting referrals. If someone you know and trust is willing to vouch for someone and put their name behind them, then chances are they’re someone that’s worth interviewing.
Interviewing random strangers will always be a toss up, but hiring within your network gives you a better chance at finding your ideal candidate. Just make sure that the person you’re receiving the referral from is someone that you trust and is a professional themselves.
Screen Candidates Thoroughly
Why more beauty business owners don’t take this point seriously I’m not sure. Listen: just because someone puts it on an application doesn’t necessarily make it true. People use applications and resumes to make themselves sound as great as possible in the hopes that you’ll choose them over someone else.
That being said, if you see an application from someone that you like, follow up by doing the proper research. If they have past job history, call those jobs and speak to their former supervisors. If the put down references, call their references and ask great questions.
Hiring and training a new employee on average costs $15-20,000! You don’t want to end up hiring the wrong person when you could have simply saved yourself the time by doing a detailed check on their resume and application.
Check Their References
We touched on this a little bit in the previous point, but it can’t be stated enough . . . call each and every reference that they give you. The best candidates will always have great references that have great things to say about them.
The key is to ask specific, open-ended questions when calling their references. Ask things like:
How long have you known _____ for?
Why would they be a great fit for this position?
When did _____ exhibit characteristics that impressed you?
Where did you first meet _____ and what your impression of them?
When you ask open-ended questions like this, you force the reference to respond with details about the applicant. Asking easy “yes” or “no” questions wont’ help you, but asking questions like this will give you a deeper insight into the possible person you’re going to be interviewing.
Conduct A Skills Test
Imagine hiring someone for a beauty position only to find out that they had no skill or expertise to perform the procedures and tasks that you hired them for. Hard to comprehend, right? However, it happens all too often.
If you’re hiring someone who needs to be a skilled specialist at what they do, then having them perform a skills test makes a lot of sense. I would rather a beauty business I work with pay their employees more and do a skills test than pay them less and go based off their resume and application.
Those you can fake, but you can’t fake a skills test. This gives you a chance to see the person in action, see how they interact with people, and see if they’ve got the right combination of all these things to consider hiring.
Putting that there’s a skill test on your application will also weed out people that shouldn’t be applying. If they know that they’ll have to pass a skills test to get the job, people who aren’t qualified simply won’t apply because they know they won’t pass, so it’s a win-win.
Conclusion
Hiring people for your beauty business is always going to be tricky, especially when it comes to finding the right people. However, if you keep these tips in mind, it will help make the entire process run a lot smoother and ensure you interview and eventually hire the best candidates!